Friday, 16 March 2007

Poem by Alison Pick

Eyewear is very glad to present Alison Pick (pictured) this Friday.

Pick, a true rising star, was the winner of the 2005 CBC Literary Award for Poetry, the 2003 National Magazine Award for Poetry, and the 2002 Bronwen Wallace Award for most promising Canadian poet under the age of 35.

Her 2003 collection Question & Answer was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award and for a Newfoundland and Labrador Book Award. Alison's first novel, The Sweet Edge, was a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book of 2005 and has recently been optioned for film by Four Seasons Productions in Toronto.

Originally from Kitchener, Ontario, Pick has lived, read, published, and taught across the country. I am particularly pleased with this poem, as it deals with something that, even in March, resonates with my Canadian memories: snow.

So Much More To Say

The final snow-removal trucksarrive like liberating troops. Up and upthe streets they charge to roses tossedfrom windows. Winter’s a war finally won.Throw back the drapes: warmth sashays in,a kink, little inkling: we’ve felt this before,forgotten it too, in the womb, in an earlier

life. Dreaming is easy in hours like these,the mind’s backyard awash in new light,but troops are troops, welcomed or not.Still I haven’t said what I meant: something lostwill clear a space for something new to follow.Ice in the harbour, for instance, melting,starts the swell of spring. The Quakers,

for instance, worship in silence that breaksin an outburst of words. The shattered things,which is to say, the cool of your palm againstmy thigh, which is to say there is no sayingfor the dark and shady. And no perfection.My broken parts have always been broken –touch me. Touch me there.